So it turns out my friends decided to play a prank on me months ago and make me marry Stenvar (the dude) when I wasn't looking. I found out when I talked to him and he called me "love". So what did I do? Collected 10,000 coins in earnings from his store, brought him to the winterhold college, killed him, and put his body on display...

Thats it I'm only storing bodies (for dead thralls..) in display cases now. This is the most brilliant discovery since the advent of putting ragdolls in sawmills

I always get screwed over with my thief characters cause I never really get hit. When I fight it's either already over through sneak attacks, or I'm dodging/blocking attacks and just not getting hit. So my light armor skill always lags way behind my main combat skills. :(

I've started the Winterhold College quest line and decided that I should use more magic skills instead of all the warrior skills I've been using for the majority of the game.
Fighting Draugr Deathlords with only 30 Destruction on Expert isn't fun.

The main difference is that essential NPC's in Skyrim stay hostile when they get up. Maybe my memory of Oblivion is foggy, but I thought when you attacked an essential (making them hostile) and knocked them unconscious, they were no longer hostile when they got up.

Or maybe that was just the vampire dude in the dark brotherhood. Farmed a lot of skills just knocking that guy out again and again.

Pretty sure it's somewhat random, was able to do the same thing to some characters in Skyrim.

1 - Open the console and type "player.placeatme 7", sans the quotes.
2 - Close the console, your new character should appear before you.
3 - Open the console again and use the mouse on the new character (something along the lines of 'ff000xxx' may appear, let's use ' ff000cd0'on this example)
4 - Type these commands:
addfac 5c84d
setrelationshiprank ff000cd0 3
5 - Close the console and select E on the character, you'll be to recruit yourself.

This new character will act as if you had the command 'player.recycleactor' on yourself, UESP.net says what this command does here:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Console posted:

The player's inventory is replaced with a full set of Iron Equipment (Armor/Shield/1H weapons/Iron Arrows x23), a longbow, a potion of light feet, 5 Potions of Minor Healing/Magicka/Stamina (5 of each), 2 potions of resist fire, a potion of the warrior, the book of the dragonborn, 10 lockpicks, and 2 torches. This is best used at the start right after your hands are freed, since you lose anything you already had before the command was used. This makes a great starter set.

If you want your inventory on the new character, open the console, select yourself (the number 14 should appear) and type 'duplicateallitems refID', in this case, 'duplicateallitems ff000cd0'. Equiping items is just like Fallout 3/New Vegas, 'equipitem refID' or 'unequipitem refID'.

I didn't test thoroughly, because I only find out before I went to bed, but your character should marriable as well, just select the character and type 'addfac 19809' and 'setrelationshiprank refID 4', might work.

Also, does not work with the Multiple Followers mod I found in the Bethsoft Forums.

Best thing is: save, close the game and open it again, it will still work!

I've started the Winterhold College quest line and decided that I should use more magic skills instead of all the warrior skills I've been using for the majority of the game.
Fighting Draugr Deathlords with only 30 Destruction on Expert isn't fun.

It's not like you actually ever have to use magic during the quest line, anyway.

One reason why I think that only character related to the main quest should be essential is a bad idea is that how would you like it if you could never join the College of Winterhold because Faralda got killed by an offscreen dragon attack?

One reason why I think that only character related to the main quest should be essential is a bad idea is that how would you like it if you could never join the College of Winterhold because Faralda got killed by an offscreen dragon attack?

Essential characters could still act as essentials to every attacker but the player?